Still Going

Strawberry season is one of the shorter harvest seasons. The average strawberry harvest season is about 3-5 weeks long. That’s not much time! Luckily, the climate down here in North Carolina is warm enough in the late winter/early spring that we can get a jump start on the season. We can begin picking in early April while most of the northern states won’t even begin picking until mid-May. That also means that our season ends slightly earlier when the weather warms up.

Strawberries are very particular with the weather. They like it to be mild. Cooler nights and mild, sunny days. If it gets too cold and frosts, it can kill the blossoms. If it gets too hot, the plants begin their reproduction cycle and produce what are called runners. Runners are long vines that stretch out from the main plant and root into the ground to create a daughter plant. Daughter plants would be next year’s strawberries if the plants were in the wild.

On the farm, however, we don’t like runners. First off, runners mean that the plants are spending their energy on the production of runners and not making fruit. It basically means that picking is over for the season. Secondly, we put in a lot of effort to make sure that the strawberries have raised beds and plastic mulch to keep them healthy, happy, and weed-free. If the daughter plants were allowed to root, they would be all over the rows which would make it impossible to irrigate and fertilize, not to mention how hard it would be to walk through the field! Once runner production begins and picking stops, we kill off the strawberry plants and start fresh for the next season.

Last year in 2017, we had an exceptionally long picking season! We had a very mild winter that allowed the plants to begin production in February and we were picking in early March. Then, the weather stayed mild all the way into summer and we continued to pick strawberries through the first week of June. That’s a long season!

This year was more typical. We had a relatively cold March with several frost events. The plants began production in March and we were picking in April. Right now, we are into our 6th week of production; which is still above average for most of the country. The weather is really starting to heat up and production is slowing.

We still have strawberries to pick but once the warm weather comes in for good and the runner production starts, we will have to wait another year for strawberry goodness. Get them while you can!